To the Editor:
Last week’s editorial page offered a glaring contrast in approaches to the divisiveness in our country. The local Democrats Club lobbied for open minds, open hearts as the beginning of a return to normalcy. We asked everyone to dispense with “force-feeding our anger.” Spring was back, baseball was back, the Inciter in Chief was booted. Why not try to find calm? Up the page was an opinion piece by the publisher of this paper that strained logic and interpretation to the max in trying to drum up indignation on the locally surefire issue of gun control. Seemingly over anxious to label President Biden a liar so a sense of equivalency could be claimed with his predecessor, Mr. Warden’s first accusation was that, “Mr. Biden lied in saying, ‘When you go to a gun show you can avoid a background check.’” That assertion is supposedly refuted because some show dealers do require a background check. Yoohoo, if a person wants to avoid a background check he goes to a gun show, simply finds a dealer who doesn’t pursue a background check and buys his gun from him. Mr. Biden’s statement is correct, Mr. Warden’s is gross overreach. When the President says “red flag laws’ have seen a reduction in suicide Mr. Warden’s fact checkers could only find the matter “inconclusive”...so he said the President lied again anyway. When Mr. Biden generalizes that the gun industry is protected from lawsuits he is once again labeled a “liar” even though the fact checkers found that while, yes, there were indeed protections for the industry there are some exceptions. This isn’t just the pot calling the kettle black, it’s the pot calling the glassware black.
Additionally, Mr. Warden refutes the assertion that the public doesn’t need military style weapons in the first place by saying we don’t need a lot of stuff, we just get what we want and can afford. Weak tea! Does that reasoning also apply to hard drugs, pornography, one too many for the road, multiple wives, machine guns, grenades, unearned college placements, and Speedos for obese men?
He also somberly cites the FBI report that just 2.8-percent of all murders committed in the US in 2018 were with rifles while neglecting to mention that 26% of the last 80 mass shootings in the US were done with an AR-15 style rifle. Since Mr. Warden wants to talk about things we don’t need he might consider that cherry picking and misinterpreting data is walking an awfully thin line between truth and deception. It’s not the stuff that builds a clear conscience, an informed readership, or a nation reunited.
Gasconade County Democrat Club
gasconadedems.org
